A Toronto construction worker had a chance to win $500,000 at the Air Canada Centre last night for putting a basketball through a hoop from NBA half court, 40-some feet away.

A Toronto construction worker had a chance to win $500,000 at the Air Canada Centre last night for putting a basketball through a hoop from NBA half court, 40-some feet away.

And for more than a moment – the only moment that approached the level of nail-biting human drama last evening, not counting the halftime log-on to Charlie Villanueva's Twitter feed – it looked as though Valentin Vidic might make that improbable heave fly true.

Before the big shot, after all, Vidic had a chance to warm up from closer range with some money on the line. They gave him 30 seconds to make a layup for $1,000, a free throw for $2,000 and a top-of-the-key three-pointer for $3,000.

He made the layup and the free throw on the first try, then swished the three-ball on his second go. Right there, in 20-something seconds, his night's work had out-earned some of the NBA players in the gym.

The NBA rookie minimum runs about $5,400 (U.S.) per game. And Nathan Jawai, the Raptor reserve who earned that rate for 35 seconds of on-court work last night, will presumably submit to paying taxes on the lucre.

If you'd seen Vidic practise in the two weeks since he found out he'd been selected as the winner, you might have possessed serious confidence that he was going to make the half-court bomb. In a pre-game warmup session on the Raptors' workout court, Vidic canned, by one count, eight half-courters in a brief shootaround.

"Dude was on fire in practice," said Cabral Richards, better known as The Score's Cabbie, who was the contest's promotional face and Vidic's on-court moral support.

At the very least, Vidic made a compelling case that he was the best Croatian shooter in the gym last night, and, as the Raptors continued to play out the string with a 115-106 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, certainly the only one playing with something on the line.

Watching Roko Ukic, Toronto's Croatian-born point guard with the notoriously wobbly jump shot, it's sometimes easy to forget that Ukic hails from the country that brought the game Drazen Petrovic, one of the NBA's all-time smoothest strokers of the ball.

Vidic seems to have the same gift of some of his country's great exports, even if he never played basketball at a high level, summing up the extent of his experience as "backyard stuff."

It goes to show there are some things you can't teach. Vidic's release looked a lot more economical than that of Ukic, who went 1-of-4 from the field last night. And that's not hyperbole.

Said Richards of Ukic: "Is he even allowed to shoot?"

Said Vidic, shrugging matter-of-factly at his knack for draining buckets: "Natural."

Last night, Richards was asked what percentage of the jackpot he would have pocketed had Vidic made good.

"At least one good night out," said Richards. "If he won the big one, I hope the kindness of his heart would have taken us to a place that rhymes with the glass rail."

Alas, six grand doesn't always go very far at places of that ilk, and Vidic said he'd likely use the cheque for a vacation.

As for his half-million-dollar heave, it was a frozen rope that had the rim in its line. It hit backboard. It hit back rim. It hit front rim. And then it hit the floor to the sound of an en-masse sigh.

Said Richards: "I thought it was good."

Said Vidic: "It looked like it had a chance. But I missed, and that's it."

That's not it. They're sending him the cheque for six grand, tax free, next week.

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